Posted on 09/27/2008 10:20:51 PM PDT by pissant
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.
A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Partys evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.
The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCains campaigns and built Foxwoods into the worlds second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCains current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCains affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.
As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing Americas casinos, helping to
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Another reason to support Senator McCain IMO. Freedom!
No, I was warned it was not the Professor’s policy to use the terms, I would have got an A, but got a B, because I blatantly didnt follow the assignment’s guidlines. I got A in her class, and to be truthful, she was an excellent teacher of Medieval History. That was a fascinating time in history..
I can respect a man that knows his way around the craptable!
He will.
Federal lobbying records show that Hunter Bidens firm was hired in June by lawyers for J. Russell DeLeon and his wife, Ruth Parasol, billionaire expatriates who founded a Web site called PartyPoker. Their company, PartyGaming P.L.C., which later went public in London, stopped doing business in the United States after President Bush signed a bill into law in 2006 aimed at curbing online gambling.
Wyeth Wiedeman, a lobbyist hired by Mr. DeLeon and Ms. Parasol, said Mr. Biden helped put together a lobbying campaign to persuade Congress to pass a law that would clarify the question about whether online gambling was legal prior to 2006. Mr. Wiedeman said the Justice Department has been examining the couple and others involved with the PartyPoker site.
Mr. Wiedeman said Mr. Biden visited a House member from North Carolina to discuss the issue...
Published accounts have said that Ms. Parasol, a lawyer who now lives in Gibraltar, started out as an adviser to her fathers telephone sex-chat business and then operated pornographic Web sites before turning to online gambling.
Hunter Biden could not be reached for comment. David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said Mr. Bidens involvement in the lobbying effort gives much ado about nothing a whole new meaning. He said Mr. Biden was hired by PartyGamings law firm, Sharp & Barnes, to provide expert advice because he specialized in electronic commerce and served on a working group on Internet gambling issues when he worked at the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration.
There is no report that any of this was connected in any way to the presidential campaigns. To see the official document detailing the $50,000 in lobbying expenditures by Biden for the gambling company investors in the gambling company, click here. (Taken from the Senate Office of Public Records.)
PartyGaming was shut out of the U.S. market when Congress passed an Internet gambling ban in 2006. Interestingly, although their lawyers PartyGaming’s investors’ lawyers paid Biden Biden’s company thousands of bucks to lobby Congress for clarification that online gambling provision was legal prior to 2006, the company actually stated in their public offering documents that they knew it probably was illegal... and that they didn’t care. As Kurt Eichenwald reported:
The Justice Department and numerous state attorneys general maintain that providing the opportunity for online gambling is against the law in the United States - and PartyGaming does it anyway. Indeed, of its $600 million in revenue and $350 million in profit in 2004, almost 90 percent came from the wallets and bank accounts of American gamblers.
To justify this, PartyGaming walks a very thin line. Providing online gambling is not illegal per se in the United States, the company argues - federal prosecutors just say it is. The company has already received an e-mail message from the Louisiana attorney general demanding that it cease providing online gambling in that state; PartyGaming simply ignored the communication and waited for additional action that never came.
The company’s prospectus - a British document that is not available in the United States - at times reads something like a legal brief, citing American case law to support the company’s position that no prosecution would ever take place.
Still, in its offering documents, PartyGaming makes no secret of the fact that even if the company’s view of the law proves wrong, it is banking on its executives’ belief that there is little that law enforcement can do - or will do - to prosecute. “In many countries, including the United States, the group’s activities are considered to be illegal by the relevant authorities,” PartyGaming says in its offering document. “PartyGaming and its directors rely on the apparent unwillingness or inability of regulators generally to bring actions against businesses with no physical presence in the country concerned.”...
Now, as the largest company pushing into the United States market, PartyGaming is best positioned to benefit if the question of online gambling is decided in its favor. Already, the World Trade Organization and foreign governments are siding with companies like PartyGaming and against the United States.
LATE last year, for example, the W.T.O. agreed with the Caribbean island nation of Antigua that United States legislation criminalizing online betting based in other countries violated global laws. An appellate body at the trade organization upheld the principal conclusions in that ruling in April.
And it has still been upheld, as we reported on recently in our lawsuit against the Bush administration.
I agree. I've alway liked reading and studying about that period of time.
Well, you must admit they sure know how to unite the Republican Party. Rush said it best.....when the Republican party unites, they don't lose.
There’s a lot of dirt on Campbell Brown, her dirty daddy, and her dalliances with the Saudi mouth piece.
Thanks NY Times for giving me another reason to vote for McCain.
“Will this actually help McCain in Nevada?”
Maybe. And California too. We have alot of Indian Casinos here! LOL!
Roll dem bones, Mac!
I dont trust anyone who does not play craps!
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Does texas hold em count?
The Navajo, who have the largest reservation in Arizona, do not have casinos because it is against their religion.
The next hard hitting pice by the NYTimes...
“McCain showers in the nude!!!”
OMG!! John McCain likes to gamble? At legal Casinos? The world is doomed!!! /sarc
Let’s see... 100’s of millions of people gamble every year in the U.S. at Casinos. Even more play various lottery games. And lets not forget those that gamble on Wall Street each year, local raffles, friendly poker games, and Bingo....
The NY Times gambles daily whenever it prints it’s newspapers. Will it be read? Will it wipe a bottom? Stock prices seem to indicate the latter.
The fact is... Gambling is the core of Capitalism and our great economy. Investments, growth projections, expansion, and product development are some of the biggest gambles. Start a small business? Or stay on an hourly payroll? Every decision we make in American society has a gamble attached. Now the libs would like to gamble your freedom for the chance at a free ride... Where’s the headline for that?
and obama’s ties to terrorists, slumlords, marxists, isn’t newsworthy?
wow, he’s insulting a large number of retired people that go play bingo and gamble on the rez.
And Obama's team doesn't with the sub-prime mortgage scandal that could potentially break our nation's financial system? Pray tell, what is the difference other than what Obama's team has done is most likely illegal...
Obama has many ties to 60s radicals
Was that the title beneath this one at The Old Whore?
Rather have a craps player than a poker player.
Owww, that hurt!
Politics’s, a game where a major component is bluffing.
If bluffing is a major component of your game, you have an open invitation to join our game as soon as possible.
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